New territories of CAM: Machinecraft
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ArchitectArchitectureArchitectAir conditioningBuildingWärmespeicherungTypology (theology)ConstructionPresbyterium <Architektur>BauträgerDomeHistory of architectureCity blockInterior spaceComputer animationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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ArchitectureClassical orderConstructionTypology (theology)ArchitectBauträgerPalaceLand lotBuildingSpirit levelOil platformDeposition (aerosol physics)TowerWärmespeicherungIndustrial archaeologyAir conditioningHagia Sophia <Vize>Pantheon (gods)Computer animationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Electronic componentComputer animation
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OrientalismusElectronic componentClassical orderEarthworks (engineering)Typology (theology)Computer animation
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WallBauträgerConstructionArchitectSpirit levelOil platformLightingFoundation (engineering)Land lotCentringArchitectureVacuum cleanerBuildingComputer animationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
So I'm going to share with you my presentation of the three presenters in the last presentation and then I'll hand it back to my choir. My name is a quick introduction. My name is Christina De Scrizo, who finished my PhD at the Harvard University in Hamburg. And it was focused on the subject of the machine
00:23
and robots in the context of the digital project architecture. Shortly to the structure of our presentation, I'm going to briefly present a bit of the theoretical background of the concept of machine craft.
00:41
And then I'm going to move on to present it to you about this project which was developed at the Harvard Institute in Barcelona. So as we've seen before in all the other presentations, today we face a new context. We have a big amount of digital tools,
01:00
all of them of different types. And we use them to develop different specific types of digital processes. robots and polar, whom you will shortly know, have addressed this problem. And they developed a concept which is called digital augmented reality. And in this context, they are saying
01:21
that the paradigm shift in the production conditions of architecture is actually the most relevant shift we face today in our discipline. So in terms of software packages, architects take full advantage of the potential of the digital context. We are able to develop customized scripts
01:44
by using programming skills, using open source platforms, such as grasshopper, programming languages, script art, email processing, to develop plugins and scripts which correspond to the specific demands of our projects.
02:05
But when it comes to the real physical digital tools we have and which we can use, we just use the ones which are on the market without trying to adapt to them to the needs of architecture. This is, I believe, a lost potential.
02:21
And this is the point where I developed the concept of machine craft. So machine craft is the word says. It's composed of two words, the element of the machine and the element of the craft. Or maybe to use in his 10 books of architecture, he was mentioning that the discipline of architecture
02:41
is made out of three main components, the building itself, then the development of sign blocks. Okay, we don't have this today anymore. And then mechanics. With mechanics, he meant the development of mechanical tools which can facilitate the building or the construction of the buildings.
03:04
So in this context, the concept of machine craft was developed because I believe that the potential of architects to develop machines or their own physical tools in terms of also
03:21
digital tools has been neglected. And the best way to address this problem or this potential would be by using robots so that we can reactivate this concept of craftsmanship. Because craftsmanship, as you heard before, it's a complex strategy of using both material
03:43
and your design ideas, but also making use of the tools and developing your own tools. So machine craft tries to combine those three main elements, the machine, the digital, and the manual. And this isn't just a new concept. It's a concept which you can try
04:01
to prove out architectural history. So starting with people who already argued for architects developing their own machines, if we move further on to the middle part of the Renaissance, there we can find the molesti, the architect who developed the dome, the cupola of the Florentine dome.
04:27
And in order to be able to do so, he had to span over 44 meters. Across history, the only two similar buildings span this amount of meters
04:40
where the Pantheon and Rome and the Hagia Sophia and the Centinople with us spanning only 32 meters. So in order to be able to actually build this cupola, he had to develop a new type of building strategy in terms of also organizing the construction side to develop sort of a new type of material system.
05:05
But most importantly for my case, he had to develop a complete set of machines. So these machines were conditioning the buildability of this project. So the architect being educated
05:21
in machine development can actually, this can actually be non-standard shapes which weren't present. Of course, you can see some sketches of the machines. As there are the sketches of drones that do not exist but are done by Davinci.
05:43
Then if we move across history and we go to the Industrial Revolution as we heard it before, again, the subject of development was central although it was not conducted by architects but mainly by engineers. But if we look at the Crystal Palace in London
06:03
and the architect and engineer, Joseph Tex, then he again makes a very strong case for machine craft. He was able to construct the Crystal Palace as it was by using the new technologies which were at that point on the market which also additionally developed his own machines
06:22
for the specific need of the construction side of the Crystal Palace. After the industrialization, the School of Architecture, the School of Engineering surfaces from each other quite strongly. For this reason, architects weren't so much involved
06:41
anymore in machine development itself. So that in our age, if we look at architecture, we do use computer robots or 3D printers and other types of digital tools. But the problem with this is we don't implement them or adapt them to the needs of architecture
07:02
but we just take them as they are and try to make use of them whether it makes sense or not. In this context, the project of mini-builders at the BI Institute was developed. We tried to make a case for not just looking for technologies
07:22
which are in the market to implement the architecture but actually to look at existing technologies and to develop our own tools and technology in order to sustain a construction strategy which we develop and which would make more sense for existing for the organization
07:42
of existing construction sites than just making the use of a robot, a traditional robot. So we had a look at automation on the construction site. Of course you can find a huge amount
08:00
of different examples. Here you will find just a few the ones which I consider representative. So in Japan in the mid 80s they were quite strong on automizing the construction site. You can see this big heavy system which is a bottom-up
08:20
construction system. You can see this huge platform level to level. It contains different types of actually robots so this was in the 80s so if we consider that robots aren't that new in terms of architecture as we believe nowadays. It would build level for level
08:41
and be pushed up. As you can see the whole system is quite huge it takes a lot of place around the building so it's actually not usable and it doesn't make sense for every type of construction site. Here it does it's a tower and
09:01
the surroundings do have a place to set up this whole system but in other cases maybe this wouldn't take place. A different example in our times who are robots for instance at the ETH in Tui they are just being used
09:22
they are taken from the car industry and just being used in terms of architecture for doing repetitive tasks which as humans we could more or less do but it would be quite time intensive. There is actually no revolutionary use
09:42
or no implementation or adaptation to the needs of architecture or specific needs of architecture as it could be. For our robotics project we had a look at industrial robots but also 3D printers and
10:00
for 3D printers we find it quite interesting that the strategy of material deposition could be used in an efficient way for architecture in terms of building non-standard geometries and also in terms of modalities that support structure while printing
10:20
curved elements. We tried to develop a combination of these two technologies which resulted in a sort of hybrid. Another quite important aspect for us was the aspect of the construction. If we look at the construction tools on the construction site
10:40
they are quite huge they represent a danger for the people or the workers. They are not flexible and not at all lightweight. So we tried to address this problem by wanting to design and develop a
11:00
small robotic system which should be flexible, mobile and lightweight so that there would be no danger for the people working actually on site and that you could have the opportunity of placing and replacing by hand the robots. But before actually developing
11:20
the robotic technology we started with material processes because it wasn't quite clear what type of material we are going to use for 3D printing. But again before starting with the material we need some sort of mechanism for extruding more material and a type of nozzle
11:40
so that you can control the material position of the layers. So on the left hand side you can see the first extruder which we developed and on the right hand side different types of nozzles. We started by doing here in the background, you can see myself and the
12:00
white hand extruder we constructed and on the top front the nozzle. As you can see the material experiments weren't successful at all. What I should have mentioned before, we started using by experimenting with two component resin systems
12:20
which we combined with marble powder. So in order to achieve this results at the end of the project we had to look at different material parameters and to understand how the material works. So to understand the ratio between the two different resin components to understand how
12:40
much marble powder to add in order to make it more cost efficient and also more stable to understand how the viscosity of the material functions during the extrusion and also to have a look at the extrusion rates and the extrusion speed
13:00
while depositing the material. So after doing a whole bunch of different types of experiments in the lower side we even tried to add glass fiber but we had quite big problems during the extrusion process and also we didn't
13:20
find a way to control the way that the glass fiber was deposited and the orientation of the glass fiber so that it would make sense to actually increase the stability that we decided to just use the two component resin system and marble powder. At the end
13:40
of our material experiments we had quite nice results. We placed this nozzle at the end of Kumpa robot and actually managed to have quite perfect results as you can see here. So after finishing with the material experiments
14:00
we went back to looking at the printers strategy. So as I said before we were quite fascinated by the 3D printing technology but we tried to adapt it for a specific piece. We all know that 3D printers are printing layer after layer on top of each layer but it's
14:20
not a continuous process in itself because it finishes one layer then moves up and deposits the next layer. So also on a conceptual level we found it much more interesting to say that we actually do have a continuous printing and positing strategy so
14:40
that we decided to print light spirals so that the printing process isn't interrupted and also by doing tests we found out that the structural stability is higher if you print with a spiral. We had a look at the construction phases
15:00
in general terms construction phases and we identified a few main phases for architecture. You would usually start by building the foundation then move on with building the walls and then somewhere between you also need reinforcement. So for these three phases we decided to
15:20
develop three separate robots which which fulfill the needs of these phases. So the first robot which we designed and built is the foundation robot that is responsible for building the first five to fifteen layers
15:40
of the shape you are designing. Here at the front you can see it has a sensor so before starting to actually think you have to make marks on the ground for the footprint of the building so it can follow
16:00
it can follow the shape and it knows where to deposit material as we decided not to work with the local positioning system as this would have taken a lot of design and scripting energy which we rather invested in developing the robots themselves. Here you can see our photo structure
16:20
which we printed with this robot you see the tiny robot in the center of the platform how it is printing the foundation layers. It is connected to industrial extruder as we needed huge amounts of material and we couldn't use any more the small extruders we designed for ourselves in the lab.
16:40
Moving on to the second phase. This is the robot responsible for actually printing the whole structure. It is being placed manually on top of the previously printed foundation layers and it follows the spiral movement
17:00
round and round until the shape is finished. You can see some images from the same photo structure so it is again connected to the industrial extruder where it gets the material from. It moves around you can see this small element the spar which is being used
17:20
to just in case that there are some printing errors or that the material isn't evenly distributed. It will flatten the material out so that the movement can continue quite smoothly. You can see again a close up of this robot
17:40
here with the small rows it excuses to move along the structure and push itself up. As we printed in Barcelona in spring as it was quite humid and the resin system needs a bit of time to actually
18:00
to harden we also decided to build in this two heating elements just in case it was hard to rain because of the higher humidity during spring time so that the separate layers would fasten in time for when the robot would get around
18:20
again. And the last phase of course the reinforcement phase this is the vacuum robot this is capable of placing on the structure a vacuum between himself and the surface of this photo structure it can just move up and down
18:40
and depositing the reinforcement layers. And this is the final slide and here you can see the extruder working with the final robot how it is following the robot around the platform and depositing the material.
19:00
So I believe that this project shows quite nicely how architects nowadays have the possibility to get involved in the development of design of course development of material systems but also in developing their own physical tools for accomplishing or for designing new
19:20
fabrication or construction strategies which they see fit for their specific needs of their individual projects. Thank you. Applause